When Israel seems guilty of killing Palestinians to The New York Times, the newspaper is eager to trumpet the story across its front page. We all remember the June 12, 2006 headline “Errant Shell Turns Girl Into Palestinian Icon“, and the article that suggested that in all likelihood, Israel was responsible for the shell that killed 9 Palestinians.

But when Palestinians kill Palestinians, The New York Times is a lot less interested. A car bomb near a Gaza beach on Friday exploded near a Hamas vehicle, killing five Hamas members, a 7 year-old girl, Sareen Safadi, and wounding 22 others (at last count). Did The New York Times put the story on its front page? No, but the article about over-exuberant parents of children at summer camp did. How about the International round-up on page A2. Again, no. Nor was the story featured on page A5, the front of the International Report. Buried on page a8, in the World Briefing at the back of the International Report, was this brief dispatch:

A bomb exploded next to a car used by the armed wing of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, killing three gunmen apparently allied with the group and a young girl, Hamas and medical officials said. The authorities did not immediately place responsibility for the explosion, which occurred at an intersection outside Gaza City. Several people were wounded, including passers-by on their way to the beach. (REUTERS)

The human rights community consists mostly of decent middle-class white people who, when they see – or think they see – evil done by Westerners like themselves, who feel impelled to act. Think apartheid South Africa, Kosovo, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo.

But when these same folks see evil done by non-Westerners, they choke. It’s prejudiced, they feel, to criticize non-Westerners, and they live in dread of being labeled racist, or worse, “Islamophobic.”

Rather than bringing universal justice to those whose very lives depend on them, human rights groups are narcissistically expiating Western guilt. In the Muslim world there are millions of blacks, women, gays, apostates, atheists, labor leaders, freedom fighters and racial and religious minorities who live without basic human rights and who desperately need help from the human rights community. Yet Amnesty and others ignore non-Western totalitarianism so that they can define themselves in opposition to Western sins – imperialism, colonialism and racism.

It is horribly wrong for “rights” activists to project their white guilt onto Israel, but that may not be the worst crime. In order to pound Israel (and America), Amnesty and other groups must look away, and stay out of the path of non-Western despots, who then oppress millions with impunity. Amnesty’s sin is against those they have abandoned in order to, they think, make themselves clean.

When I saw that story, I immediately wondered whether it would be compared to the unexplained Gaza beach explosion of a few years ago that got so much ink. But no, it disappeared, except in relation to the tit-for-tat arrests and interrogations that have been conducted by Fatah and Hamas. The dead little girl is forgotten. So are the dead children of that Palestinian politician who were gunned down on the way to school in their dad’s limousine. But the world remembers Muhammed Al Durah and Hula Ghaliya.

Why do we know Rachel Corrie’s name but not the name of the woman who threw her baby from the car to save it from an approaching bulldozer-terrorist?

Why do these other children have no names or faces? Why are their deaths brushed aside as collateral damage?

If Israel were not able to defend itself, it would vanish in an instant.

And that is all you need to know.

(Of course, the argument then centers around what keeps Israel strong…with many of the self-righteous convinced that Israel can only be made strong by exposing itself to ferocious attack—and in so doing will achieve moral superiority of tremendous proportions—like those Jewish fighters in Warsaw in 1943?—or at least, presumably, rid itself of the albatross around its neck, so that, once again presumably, when those thousands of rockets rain down, Israel can bask in the knowledge that it has done the right thing…. It’s really so simple….)

You know, with all those Hamas dudes torturing their Fatah neighbors and throwing them off the roof, and kneecapping them and killing them in more conventional ways. And then, all those Fatah guys torturing their Hamas brothers and locking them up and all that other really tragic stuff….

Could the MSM really, really be changing? Is it possible? I was actually feeling palpitations.

But then I breathed a lot easier when I saw this sub-header:

“Report places part of blame on Israel’s policies toward Palestinians”

“Amnesty and other groups must look away, and stay out of the path of non-Western despots, who then oppress millions with impunity. Amnesty’s sin is against those they have abandoned in order to, they think, make themselves clean.”

What these “human rigths” fakers are really doing is continuing the opression of non white peoples by other means.

“Human rights,” a western concept, has become complicitous in the act of oppression of non Westerners.

The BBC has been fined a record £400,000 by Ofcom, the independent regulator for the UK’s communications industries, for faking winners and misleading audiences in its television and radio competitions.

In the BBC’s defense, I think we can all agree that that illustrious news organization, having been forced by Israel’s policies vis a vis the Palestinians to consistently lie, falsify, deceive and fabricate in its news reports and analyses over the past almost nine years, has been unable, despite no doubt its best efforts, to remain honest in other realms.

Clearly, the Zionists have made them do it. The BBC can no longer help itself and is, perforce, the victim here.

Actually it was those Jews, well before the Zionists came on the scene, in Norwich who were responsible for the BBC’s reprehensible behaviour towards British citizens whom it defrauds to the tune of several billions of pounds per annum.
The Jews in Norwich in 1144 were accused of a blood libel and then in 1190 there was a massacre of Jews and since then they have been a prize scapegoat for all British ills, including the the BBC’s lies and thievery.
Funny how money grabbing people have projected their behaviour onto Jews in general.

i keep insisting that anti-semitism is essentially scapegoating in difficult societal circumstances. in general people find it hard to accept ‘force majeur” or their own responsibility for bad things and they scapegoat. jews are a traditional scapegoat. and traditional scapegoats are convenient: it releases from thinking/reasoning/accepting responsibility (which is hard) and they are not liked by anybody anyway.

difficult societal circumstances. ?? In Britain today? On a scale of 1 to 10 is that difficult 1? /Sarcasm off

Just taking the years 2000 to 2004 why didn’t Israelis resort to that tactic?
Amazing that in my rambles I never once came across them using Muslim or Islam in connection with the terror but only denoted groups.

The Brits have been scapegoating for centuries, but until now it is only becoming visible through blogs.
If they couldn’t connect the Jews then it was the Frogs, and if not them then the Huns. The Bolsheviks of course were synonymous with Jews because they were the easiest red herring the Socialists could drag across the front page.

britain is decaying, culturally and demographically. that’s precisely why they have such big problems with muslim immigrants: why they are there and why their soft and violent jihad is effective–which is precisely what the brits are afraid of and scapegoat the jews.

Just taking the years 2000 to 2004 why didn’t Israelis resort to that tactic?

because the jews have always been in difficult societal circumstances and with some exceptions they don’t have a universally accepted scapegoat to use.
the levys et. al. are the exception and they too scapegoat the jews to be in line with the world.

If they couldn’t connect the Jews then it was the Frogs, and if not them then the Huns.

sure, but i would not put those in the same category as the jews. they are not universal scapegoats and it’s much less practical to go for their elimination.
there’s a chance with jews. and there is a big precedent.